Carex - Crinum

Carex grayi £3.25 / £4.50
Persistent, spiky inflated utricles.... oh, forget it. The flower spikes look like maces (the weapon not the spice) and look rather spectacular from early May through to the summer. A broad leaved hardy sedge for ordinary conditions. Everyone seems to want it when we take them to early May plant sales ( then we run out).

Cenolophium denudatum £3 / £4
An excellent umbellifer, with finely divided foliage and white umbels in summer. Best of all, it thrives in dry shade. Variable in height, but can reach 1m.

Centaurea benoistii £3.25 / £4.50
An fine tall plant with excellent silver grey foliage when grown dry and lean. Wine red knobby flower heads. 150cm.

Centaurea 'Caramia' £3 / £3.50
A pleasing shorter plant with undivided green leaves and purple-pink rayed flower heads. 40cm. Perhaps a form of C. phrygia, perhaps a hybrid - the status even of some wild plants is very unlear.

Centaurea cheiranthifolia £3.25 / £4.50
Lovely large palest yellow cornflowers. Grey-green leaves. 40cm.

Centaurea fischeri £3 / £4
Rather similar, with pale pink flowers.

Centaurea kotschyana £3 / £3.50
Low growing, with rather shiny green leaves, and purple thimbly flower heads: yellow stamens contrast beautifully.

Centaurea montana 'Gold Bullion' £3 / £3.50
A cheery bright golden leaved form of the common perennial cornflower, with the usual big blue flower heads. Give it full sun for best leaf colour, and well drained soil.

Centaurea montana 'Joyce' £3 / £4
The usual greyish foliage, but with flowers of a clear pink (not pale as in carnea).

Centaurea montana 'Lady Flora Hastings' £3 / £4
As above, but nice spidery white flowers with contrasting dark stamens.

Centaurea montana 'Ochroleuca' £3 / £3.75
An interesting pale yellow flowered form, later flowering than most. I could beleive it is a hybrid with cheiranthifolia.

Centaurea montana 'Purpurea' £3 / £4
As above, with unambiguously purple flowers.

Centaurea uniflora £3 / £4
Solitary purple-pink flowers over glossy green prickly leaves. 40cm.

Centaurea Totnes Fat Lemon' NEW CULTIVAR NAME
Fat knobbly yellow flower heads on a rather stocky plant, about 50cm tall. Greyish green leaves. It's a selection from our controlled cross, benoistii x orientalis. While orientalis is a well known plant, we find it small flowered, unhappy in our wet climate, and a bit rangy. This does the same job much better, we feel.

Centaurea simplicicaulis £3 / £3.50
Finely pinnate leaves, clumping up nicely, with attractive purple pink flower heads on thin, wiry 30cm stems. For the rock garden or border front in sun.

Centaurea triumfettii 'Hoar Frost' £3 / £4
Good sized white flowers with pink-purple tinted centres in May. Grey leaves. 30cm, strongly summer dormant. A Monksilver selection from their own Turkish collection. A great plant for a sunny, well drained place.

Centaurea triumfetii x montana £3 / £4
A lucky mistake meant that we've grown one of Joe Sharman's experimental hybrids for some years, and have come to regard it very highly. Blue montana-like flowers at the tops of unbranched stems to 75cm, with a more open, running habit than montana, but still tough in the garden. Thanks, Joe!

Chasmanthe bicolor £4.50
A winter growing ally of Crocosmia, flowering rather spectacularly in spring. The flowers are long, with vermilion upper segments, lower segments yellowy green. Height to 1m. The corms make a good clump quickly. For warmer southern gardens where it can dry out in summer, perhaps at the root of a big shrub.

Chloranthus fortunei £3.25 / £3.75
A whorl of four leaves, purple/brown tinted when young, on each 30cm stem, and little white flowers in May. A hardy clumper for woodland conditions. Very attractive.

Chrysosplenium macrophyllum  £4
The golden saxifrage that thinks it's a Bergenia. Round bristly leaves, new rosettes forming at the ends of obscene fat hairy stolons. Flowers quite large but uninteresting compared with the foliage. Mad ground cover for a woodsy bed.

Cimicifuga see Actaea - the names have been changed to protect the innocent…

Cirsium 'Mount Etna' £3 / £4
An odd little plant, only 60cm tall with narrow flower heads, white with projecting violet stamens. Not unlike C. oleraceum, but without the lush decurrent stem leaves. Seems to be getting around the nursery trade, but frankly, the next two are infinitely better.

Cirsium rivulare 'Atropurpureum' £3 / £4
The classic crimson-purple flowered species for the border. 1.2m.

Cirsium sp. £3 / £4
This is an imposing counterpart in pure white, with good sized flower heads in August. Rather taller (1.5m or more). Unidentified, from Roger & Sue Norman. I have never seen this fine plant anywhere else.

Convallaria majalis var. rosea £3 / £3.50
Lily of the Valley is one of those infuriating plants that likes some people/gardens and not others, for no discernible reason. This is the pink form…

Convallaria majalis 'Vic Pawlowski's Gold' £3.75 / £5
...and this has particularly good yellow stripes to the leaves; never seen a reversion.

Coptis japonica var. major £3.25 / £3.75
From the backwaters of the Ranunculaceae comes this small Northern genus for cool, humusy positions. Finely divided, but rather stiff, ternate leaves to 25cm, and tiny white flowers in autumn, as the leaves go down, with extraordinary whorls of seed pods with the new leaves in spring. Gently running. Very rarely seen.

Coriaria kingiana £3.25 / £4
A low sub-shrubby perennial with fine pinnate leaves, covered in little yellow-stamened flowers in spring, followed later by small dark purple berries.  Not very hardy, so give it a milder spot. I really like this rare, rare plant.

Coriaria terminalis xanthocarpa £3.25 / £4
The only Coriaria that's anything approaching widely grown: larger leaves and clusters of translucent yellow berries at the stem tips. Few. No news yet on the whereabouts of the red fruited form.

Corydalis leucanthema DJHC 752 £3 / £3.50
A fibrous rooted species for shade. Rather substantial leaves, grey and somewhat marbled in silver. Pink-and-white flowers in spring. 15cm.

Corydalis ochroleuca £3 / £3.50
A 30cm mound of greyish foliage with green marked, white flowers over a really long season. No great rarity, but weatherproof and charming, taking sun or shade. Seeds around usefully rather than dangerously.

Corydalis 'Kingfisher' £3.25 / £3.75
Much more compact and less running than the next two,  it is a really lovely sky blue in flower; cashmeriana x flexuosa.

Corydalis 'Spinners' £3 / £3.50
There are many flexuosa/elata hybrids around now. We still consider this and the next to be the finest. 'Spinners' is close to elata in appearance with scented indigo blue flowers, but bulks up more densely and generously, as with flexuosa.

Corydalis 'Tory MP' £3 / £3.50
This one is more obviously intermediate. It's tall (to 75cm), forming a vigorous, dense, spreading clump, with intense blue flowers and red tinted stems. It flowers for an unusually long time in late spring and summer, then may repeat in autumn after a summer recess. It grows well in full sun as well as partial shade.

Crinum 'Ellen Bosanquet' £5 / £6
An old hybrid, with spreading leaves and little neck to the bulb. Flowers a warm colour at the red end of pink. Once large and deep, the massive bulbs are hardy.

Crinum 'Hanibal's Dwarf' £4 / £6
Compact plant, around 50cm. Pink flowers with a rather starry effect.

Crinum moorei £5 / £6
Palest pink, well formed flowers on 1.5m stems. Perfectly hardy in the mildest gardens, such as Coleton Fishacre where it is one of the glories of late summer. Give it a warm, sheltered site or pot elsewhere.

Crinum x powellii AGM £4 / £5
Tough and hardy; I've admired a huge clump in Ledbury (cold!) for years.
Luxuriant foliage, and bright pink flowers to 1.2m in summer.